The Malta Resources Authority (MRA) report to the EU on our renewable energy (RE) targets, rather than “ambitious and overoptimistic”, as suggested by The Malta Independent on Sunday, shows clear evidence of meanderings and uncertainties. The 9.2 per cent achievement prediction is a shaky one, being easily variable by two or three full percentage points either way. The cause is the usual one: we were up against yet another deadline and had to deliver a half-cooked omelette.
To mention specific areas: your report gives a prominent place to the wind farm proposals. Apart from the apocalyptic warnings of Minister Pullicino to potential opponents of wind farms, his ministry has adopted a rather lackadaisical approach. It has chosen to do nothing about a fourth site: offshore Gozo from Qbajjar to San Blas. And by “nothing” I mean just that, not even the minimum effort of taking wind speed measurements at appropriate sites.
The case of Wied Rini is on the opposite ministerial parabola. There are years of good quality wind speed measurements for the site, as well as a credible calculation of output from appropriately sized turbines for a specific wind year at the site. But the MRRA is taking more measurements when it should be pressing ahead with environmental and public persuasion measures.
There may be a hidden agenda here. Answers to questions at a recent energy seminar gave the impression that the past series of measurements are of poor quality, that the information, so-called generation curves given by manufacturers to enable interested parties to work out turbine output from measured wind speeds, is also inaccurate, and – wonder of wonders – that developers are taking great risks when deciding to invest in particular sites on the basis of wind speed measurements and generation curves. The logical conclusion of this farrago of nonsense – that the MRRA should simply have put up a typical turbine in the middle of Wied Rini at least one year ago and told us gullible idiots what ‘reality’ is – was not drawn.
The position of PV is improving rapidly. The Climate Change Committee proposal that PV should give us four per cent of electricity generation by 2020 looks out of reach, however. Taking all proposals in the pipeline, which cover a large proportion of the easily available area, could yield a quarter of that figure. And this provided we do not run into self-imposed barriers like having Enemalta insisting that for large users of electricity the feed- in rate should be dropped from 1(PV): 1(grid) to 3PV: 1(grid).
On solar water heating (SWH) the position is “promising”. The EU has a simple formula relating absorber area to electricity saving. The fact that for various reasons we may not be anywhere near that figure in practice does not interest them. As things stand, we have no extensive series of actual measurements of savings; calculations mentioned in the report are not reliable.
The use of the term “geothermal” is inappropriate because we do not have such sources. We can have “ground coupling” as a means of saving energy in heating and cooling. This makes use of the fact that, at a few metres depth, the ground and groundwater temperatures remain constant throughout the year, and so can serve as heat source or heat sink, depending on the season.
E.A. Mallia
ATTARD